


We Are Obsolete

by Still_sleepless



Category: ATEEZ (Band)
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Death, Gods, Horror, M/M, Multiple Universes Colliding, Murder, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pagan Gods, Past Lives, Psychological Horror, Rebirth, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Resurrection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24606370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Still_sleepless/pseuds/Still_sleepless
Summary: Listen carefully when I say this: the gods are not on our side.Wooyoung's blood freezes over and his lungs disintegrate, the staunch green-blue glow of power sticking to him like a film and choking his insides.
Relationships: Choi San/Jung Wooyoung
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	We Are Obsolete

**Author's Note:**

> ???

When Wooyoung dies for the first time, there's a coldness that sets into his limbs, sinking into the spaces between each joint and creating a pool of indifference in the softness of his bone marrow.

He's starkly aware of it all. The twist of his neck as he hits the ground. The shattering of his teeth, calcium shards cutting into the pink of his gums, and his eyes bursting; still perpetually staring at San and the blood that was collecting on the cold concrete between them.

Death was cold. Wooyoung remembers that the most. It was the kind of cold that doesn't leave you even when your body has turned to dust. He feels it even now.

Death isn't lonely. Wooyoung wishes it was but he's being haunted. _Maybe it's a mutual haunting_ , he finds himself thinking in those first few seconds when they're still in limbo, _those crescents make up a full moon, fate against fate._

San dies and takes Wooyoung with him, a morbid package deal that was decided by the heavens. A sick joke and Wooyoung is still waiting for the punchline, something to ease the pain, to heal the bruise. It doesn't come. 

They land in another time, another world. The horizon flips, shredded by gold dust and iron nails, until they escape through a hole in the sky, caught between countless deaths, before falling back into life. It's breathed into them by a ghost of god, shivering and stale on the other side of forever.

Listen carefully when I say this: the gods are not on our side. Wooyoung's blood freezes over and his lungs disintegrate, the staunch green-blue glow of power sticking to him like a film and choking his insides.

The oceans are above them. A globe that's run red by blood and Wooyoung is still screaming when they awaken, mouth open so wide that his jaw is unhinged on the right side. The screech is high and volatile enough to pierce the nether and brings forth tears from the mottled clouds above. He screams even louder when he realises that his face has gone crooked, blood dripping down unevenly on his pyjama top. The collar is half drenched before his shrieking finally stops, petering out into a broken whine, desperate and animalistic. It only stops because there's a hand on the small of his back and the taste of fire lingering between his molars.

"San. What have you _done_?" He means to be strong, to be angry. But there's nothing in his voice other than simple dejection. Wooyoung has lived his life picking up after San. Now he's dead and he's still doing the same thing.

There's no answer. San is marvelling at the state of the world that they're in. An orb of grey water passes by at eye-level, holding in a creature that Wooyoung can't quite process. There are three suns all blinking above in turn and yet the light only seems to be dwindling.

San turns briskly, seemingly having remembered Wooyoung's presence. The smile on his face is radiant - eyes filled with manic passion - and Wooyoung can only swallow back his spit. It was the last thing he had seen before dying, San and that smile. Carefully, San edges forward - skin blue under the sky and head grazing another one of those orbs - to gently push at Wooyoung's jaw, slotting it back into place with hands that are too soft, too innocent to be here. It breaks Wooyoung's heart. The last vestige crumbling even as he tries to hold on. To remember them as they were and not as they are. But when his eyes are closed, all he can see is that smile and the space before the fall.

He jolts at the phantom _crunch_ his memory conjures up, hands clenching and imaginary heartbeat heavy in his ears before he grounds himself, eyes opening only to find San staring at him like he's an interesting specimen, shark teeth on display.

 _This can't be the man I'm in love with._

Wooyoung tries to convince himself of a lie that can never be true even when the obvious is staring him in the face. 

_In every universe and in every life, you will always be in love with him._

This was always going to happen. There is a map written out in the air, every atom vibrating and drawing themselves into a pattern that makes sense, that's made to be acted out. This life - all these lives, were created to lead to now; Wooyoung trapped in a cycle that can't be broken and San racing to the next obstacle. 

It's a fact of nature that can't be conquered. 

San is nature. An immutable force that drives needles into skin with ease. Wooyoung's skin - the skin of his heart - is full of them and has been ever since their first meeting in the hospital.

"We're dead, Wooyoung," San says seriously, brown eyes bloodshot when he frowns. 

"I thought you said that you wouldn't die?"

San seems pleased by the question, pride heavy in his eyes at Wooyoung's observation. "Ah. That's the trick right there." San flashes both of his hands, palms up in a subservient gesture, malleable and willing when he's never been either of those things. "We're not really dead. Our spirits are _here_." San places one cold hand on Wooyoung's chest - that's rising and falling with each breath - but there's no heartbeat. "That's what keeps us ourselves, you see?"

Wooyoung doesn't see, he can only feel the weight of San and the emptiness that's taken a hold of him. They continue to glow, a fluorescent sheen that Wooyoung wants to rip through. 

_We are not living_ , he wants to say, _this isn't life._

But he could never go against San and so he stays silent, watching San with a face like stone.

"We were chosen," San's slight frown is dismissive but his tone is wild, infused with energy that the drugs could never give him, "out of millions they picked _us_. They're sadistic, these gods, but they're smart too, Wooyoung. Don't underestimate them."

Wooyoung is about to ask what would happen if he does but San is already spinning.

Insanity is ruling them, a dormant universe where the skies are a sinkhole and the sea opens up with jagged teeth that drag you in and won't let you leave. San is pivoting, clothes picking up in the wind and Wooyoung follows, reaching out to stop the separation that he can't bear.

There's thunder in the distance, sand collecting in red mountains and the air is whistling an eerie tune, grating on Wooyoung's ears. It's at this sound that San stops, smile dripping something insidious when he reappraises Wooyoung with hungry eyes. 

"What?" Wooyoung asks, a lump in his throat that won't leave. His limbs feel like cinder blocks when San pushes him onto the floor, like he's moving in treacle in a dream that doesn't stop. 

"You've got to go." San answers simply, one hand at Wooyoung's throat. There's a thread there, that San pulls taut and then he pulls even harder. He unlaces Wooyoung's body and pulls something out, a black liquid that won't stay still. "Bye, Wooyoung," he whispers, before he eats the ooze.

 _Bye_. 

He knows, somehow, that this is not the end.

Wooyoung's second life starts in a hospital - five feet from San.

**Author's Note:**

> So, that was quite a lot I guess.
> 
> This is actually the sequel to a fic I wrote this time last year and so I wrote it to celebrate the 1year anniversary. However, it can be read standalone which is why I didn't make it a series. The first story is called "Surrender (For I Am A God)" if you want to read it.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed and I would appreciate a comment.
> 
> Okay, bye now!!


End file.
